Zircon the Hunchback
by Martial Arts Master
Summary: Another Dragon Tales fanfic. When Max discriminates against another dragon because of his hunchback, he must learn not to judge others by their appearances...Please review!


Zircon the Hunchback  
by Martial Arts Master  
All Dragon Tales characters copyrighted by PBS, PBS Kids, Sesame Workshop, Columbia, and Tristar Pictures. I made up Zircon, though. Now, on with the story!  
  
***  
  
  
  
It was yet another beautiful day in Emmy and Max's neighborhood.  
  
In their playroom, Emmy and Max were drawing pictures.  
  
Eventually, they were finished.  
  
"What did you draw, Emmy?" Max asked, looking up from his finished picture.  
  
"I drew a picture of how I won the soccer game today," Emmy replied, showing Max a picture of herself about to kick the ball into the goal and score the winning point for her team.  
  
Having been drawn by a six-year-old, obviously the picture looked like a child's drawing. But it was actually a fine-quality picture for a child's drawing.  
  
"I drew a picture of one of your classmates," Max said excitedly, showing Emmy his picture.  
  
This picture was obviously of poorer quality than Emmy's, having been drawn by a four-year-old instead of a six-year-old. But it wasn't so bad that you couldn't tell what the picture was, and Emmy could: it was a picture of another six-year-old, only one of the arms was missing.  
  
"She looks funny without one of her arms," Max said, laughing at the drawing and, presumably, at the classmate in the picture.  
  
Emmy was justifiably angry.  
  
"Max, she can't help it if she was born with a birth de...de...de..." Emmy was struggling with the word, being, as said before, only six. Finally, though, she finished, "...defect!"  
  
"She still looks funny," Max said, crossing his arms stubbornly.  
  
Suddenly, something inside the secret drawer glowed.  
  
"Look, the dragons are calling us!" Emmy said, forgetting about the picture.  
  
She took the dragon scale out of the box in the drawer.  
  
Emmy and Max both gripped the dragon scale and said, "I wish, I wish, with all my heart, to fly with dragons, in a land apart."  
  
The drawings of dragons on the wall turned into holograms of dragons, which flew around Emmy and Max in a circle, faster and faster, until...  
  
  
  
**FLASH!** Emmy and Max appeared in Dragon Land.  
  
Cassie, Ord, Zak, Wheezie, Emmy and Max's friends, and Quetzal, the School in the Sky teacher, were waiting.  
  
"All right, it's Max and Emmy!" Ord shouted gleefully, running towards Emmy and Max.  
  
He scooped them up and gave them a dragon-sized hug.  
  
"Ord...you're squishing us," Emmy said, sounding strained.  
  
Ord put Emmy and Max down.  
  
"Sorry about that, but wait 'til you hear this!" he began. "Today is Decorate the Balls Day! Everybody gets a ball, and we all get to decorate them with lots of art supplies, and we get to use whatever we want, like glue, and sprinkles, and glitter, and feathers, and...and..."  
  
Quetzal chuckled, used to the way Ord tended to run on when explaining something.  
  
"Buenas tardes, ninos," Quetzal said in Spanish, meaning, "Good afternoon, children" in English.  
  
He continued, "Ord took the words right out of my mouth. Today is indeed Decorate the Balls Day, and Cassie, Ord, Zak, and Wheezie already have their balls. We thought perhaps you would like to participate."  
  
"Oh boy, would we ever!" Emmy declared eagerly.  
  
Quetzal handed Emmy and Max each a ball.  
  
"Now, why don't all of you go inside?" Quetzal suggested. "All of the other dragons have already started decorating their balls."  
  
Everyone headed inside the School in the Sky.  
  
  
  
A few minutes later, as everyone worked on their balls, Emmy noticed that Cassie had put glue and feathers all over her ball, and nothing else.  
  
"What kind of ball are you making, Cassie?" Emmy asked.  
  
"I'm trying to make my ball look like a rhyme bird's head," Cassie responded, putting more glue on her ball. "Later I'll add two pieces of cardboard to make a beak."  
  
Meanwhile, Max noticed that Ord was liberally applying magenta paint all over his ball.  
  
"What's that supposed to be?" Max asked.  
  
"I want my ball to look like a dragonberry!" Ord responded. "I love dragonberries!"  
  
As for Zak and Wheezie, their balls looked like big messes. This was because they each, being two halves of the same two-headed body, had only one hand to work with, and ended up slobbering their balls with whatever they were trying to put on it.  
  
"Ooh, I just looooooooove it!" Wheezie sang about what her ball looked like now.  
  
"Love it? Our balls are messy and yucky!" Zak said, a disgusted look on his face.  
  
Suddenly, a commotion broke out elsewhere in the room.  
  
Our familiar group of friends got up to see what was going on.  
  
Quetzal was nowhere in sight, apparently on an errand of some kind. This was unfortunate, because a group of preschool (remember, that's the grade Cassie, Ord, Zak, and Wheezie are in) dragons were teasing another preschool dragon who had a hunchback.  
  
"What kind of a loser has a back like _that_?!" they were saying, along with comments like, "He looks like Quasimodo from that Earth story!" and "Boy, is he ugly!"  
  
The hunchback, meanwhile, was looking miserable.  
  
"Hey, leave him alone!" Zak said as he and Wheezie walked up to them.  
  
"What did he ever do to you?" Wheezie added angrily.  
  
"He's a hunchback! A monster!" one of them said, as if that were answer enough.  
  
"Who is he?" Emmy whispered to Cassie.  
  
"His name is Zircon, and he's just visiting for the day to see if this is the school he'll pick when he starts going," Cassie whispered back. "But he has a birth defect."  
  
"Oh, don't mind me..." Zircon said sadly.  
  
"Now all of you leave him alone, right now!" Ord said.  
  
The group of dragons, grumbling, went to join another group of dragons at another table.  
  
At this moment, Quetzal came into the room.  
  
"I was gathering more paint for those who had run out," he explained. "What is all the fuss?"  
  
Zak and Wheezie pointed to the antagonists.  
  
"They were making fun of Zircon," Zak said, mad.  
  
Quetzal turned to them.  
  
"Is this true?" Quetzal asked.  
  
"Well of course it's true!" one of the antagonists said. "He's a horrible monster! Just look at his _hunchback_! Doesn't anyone understand?"  
  
"I understand," Max said, laughing. "He _is_ pretty ugly, just like a monster."  
  
At this nasty comment from Max, Zircon looked sadder than before, and he abruptly left the School in the Sky, flying away.  
  
After he'd left, Emmy got steamed. She grabbed Max's arm, and pulled him outside. Cassie, Ord, Zak, and Wheezie followed, while Quetzal stayed behind to talk to those who had teased Zircon.  
  
  
  
"Now tell me again why you think Zircon is a monster," Quetzal said to them.  
  
"Because of his hunchback, duh!" one of the dragons said.  
  
"What you don't understand, ninos, is that Zircon cannot help being a hunchbacked dragon," Quetzal replied. "It is as much a part of him as our scales, our wings, our tails, and our firebreath."  
  
The other dragons looked downcast.  
  
"Gee...we never thought of _that_," the one who had spoken before said.  
  
"Imagine yourself in his place," Quetzal suggested. "Think of how you would feel if someone teased you because of something you were born with.  
  
The other dragons thought about it...and visibly shuddered.  
  
"I'd feel terrible," another one said. "I guess we really were acting mean."  
  
"We're sorry," they all said.  
  
"And if we see him again, we'll tell him that ourselves," another dragon said.  
  
Quetzal chuckled to himself. He thought about how in Dragon Land, it always took so little time for young ones to learn how to behave. He had gathered quite a bit of knowledge in his over-a-century-or-so-long life, and he knew more about Emmy and Max's land called Earth than he let on. He knew that on Earth, bigotry was not so easily stamped out...  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, outside, Emmy was giving Max a good talking-to.  
  
"Max, you really need to learn to be sensitive of others' feelings," Emmy said to him.  
  
"But he's a _hunchback_!" Max exclaimed.  
  
"Don't you remember Lorca?" Cassie asked. "He was born with his legs unable to work properly, so he always has to use his wheelchair."  
  
Max looked unsure.  
  
"Well that's different!" he said defensively. "Lorca was cool!"  
  
"Of course he was," Ord agreed.  
  
Max still didn't want to give in.  
  
"I don't care! The hunchbacked dragon looks like the space mutants in my comic books!" he said. Being only four years old, Max had not yet mastered the difference between fantasy and reality.  
  
"His name is Zircon, and space mutants aren't real," Emmy snapped.  
  
"They are so!" Max said. He took a ball out of his pocket and threw it at a tree in anger...only it missed, and rolled all the way into a cave.  
  
"Hey, come back!" he said to the ball, and ran into the cave.  
  
"Hey, wait up!" Zak said, as he, Wheezie, Ord, and Emmy ran after him.  
  
"Cassie, you go look for Zircon and try to cheer him up, and we'll meet you back here later," Emmy called over her shoulder as they ran into the cave.  
  
"All right!" Cassie called back, and flew off.  
  
  
  
Having seen where Zircon had been headed when he flew away, she knew where to go.  
  
She found Zircon at by the Dandelion Forest. He hadn't gone in; he was merely sitting by the entrance, looking dejected.  
  
Cassie landed on her feet and asked, "Zircon, why don't you come back to the School in the Sky? I'm sure no one will tease you again."  
  
"Yes they will," Zircon replied with resignation. "Those dragons and that human kid were right. I _am_ a monster."  
  
"You are _not_!" Cassie said firmly. "You have just as much of a right to have fun as anybody else. I don't care what you look like, and neither should anyone else. As soon as they realize that, they'll apologize to you."  
  
"Maybe you're right," Zircon replied, visibly brightening. "I guess I'll give it a try."  
  
"Great!" Cassie said, giving Zircon a brief hug. "Now come on! Those mean dragons and Max probably feel guilty right this second."  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, inside the cave, Max had finally found his ball.  
  
"I'm a good finder," Max said proudly.  
  
"Good for you, Max," Emmy said. "Now let's get out of this cave and see if Cassie convinced Zircon to come back yet."  
  
Ord led the way, of course, because he, being afraid of the dark, was as eager to leave the cave as possible. Then, he bumped into a stalagmite knee-first.  
  
"Ow! I hurt my knee!" he shouted loudly.  
  
"Wait, Ord, you shouldn't make loud noises inside caves!" Zak cried out, but it was too late.  
  
Ord's shout had loosened a boulder on top of the entrance/exit to the cave.  
  
With a resounding **CRASH**, the boulder fell, blocking the entrance/exit.  
  
"Uh-oh..." Max said, worried, as he had a right to be under the circumstances.  
  
"Oh no! We're doomed! We're gonna be trapped inside this cave forever and ever!" Zak screamed pessimistically, fortunately not causing something else to jar loose.  
  
"Don't panic, everyone," Emmy said. "Let's all push and try to get the boulder out of the way."  
  
Everyone tried to push against the boulder, but even with Ord's great strength, the boulder wouldn't budge, and soon everyone gave up, exhausted.  
  
"Okay..._now_ you can panic," Emmy added dryly.  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, Cassie and Zircon had flown back to the entrance to the cave, only to find the cave blocked by a boulder.  
  
"Oh no! My friends are trapped in there!" Cassie shouted, worried for their safety.  
  
"Leave it to me," Zircon said.  
  
Zircon went up to the boulder and pushed against it. He even put his hunchback up against it as well. After a lot of grunting and groaning, amazingly, he did it.  
  
Zircon pushed the boulder all the way to the side, and Emmy, Max Ord, Zak, and Wheezie were able to leave. They did so, cheering.  
  
"How'd you get the boulder loose, Cassie?" Max asked after they were done.  
  
"Not me," Cassie responded. "Zircon moved the boulder. His hunchback turned out to be an advantage after all!"  
  
"Well...that, and I happen to be very strong," Zircon added.  
  
Now Max had a guilty look on his face.  
  
Zircon had helped them all out a lot just now. Now he felt terrible that he'd teased him earlier.  
  
"Um...Zircon?" Max began. "I, uh, just wanted to say...I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made fun of you."  
  
Zircon grinned.  
  
"Apology accepted!" he said, giving Max a handshake. "Now let's go back to the School in the Sky!"  
  
  
  
Later, after Zircon had received apologies from the dragons who had teased him, Emmy and Max held hands and said, "I wish, I wish, to use this rhyme, to go back home, until next time."  
  
Emmy and Max disappeared, and reappeared back in their playroom.  
  
Max then said, "Sorry I made fun of your classmate, Emmy."  
  
"That's okay, Max," Emmy replied. "At least you learned your lesson."  
  
"Good!" Max said, and then went to his drawing. He added the arm that was missing to it, and said, "I bet she wishes she was like _this_, though!"  
  
Emmy and Max both shared a good laugh at that.  
  
  
  
The End  
  
  
  
E-mail all questions and comments to bleifer@comcast.net 


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